Hello All,Need some informed answers on 'On Board Sound' of let's say an ASUS P4C800-E 1 year old, verses a good quality PCI sound card in the Frames Per Second area and smoothness.I believe that I have read that on board sound, (I'm having no problems with it, however want to pick up just a few more FPS or smoothness), is a heavy drain on the CPU.True? and Why? Appreciate the help in advance.Best,Clay

Hi Clay,I have read that you can determine whether or not your on-board sound is impacting performance by pressing the "Q" key. This disables all FS sounds and if your frames increase or your stutters decrease, then an off-board sound card may help.Let me repeat, that I've heard this and tried it myself. I noted no difference at all with sound enabled or disabled. But did I believe it? Of course not. I went ahead and bought a sound card. It made absolutly no difference in frame rates or smoothness. R-

Please wait for MUCH more informed responses than mine but I recall reading any number of posts that blame on board sound for all sorts of problems.I'm sure you'll get technical answers here but I'll bet if your do a search on "on board sound" you will get a lot of information.Regards,Jim

Hi Clay,While this link is for a different Intel based board (using the 848 chipset) the page may nevertheless be useful to you in sizing up your onboard sound gaming performace.The best test, though, is your own test. Create a flight in the sim that will include a "sound" heavy aircraft (one with great sounds... your DF727 would be a good choice) and plenty of ATC. Be sure to save the flight once you get the aircraft trimmed and running happy. Now observe your FPS (best to use the "Average" function in the sim. If you haven't already added the feature you can do so by adding the line "Ave_Frame_Rate_Display=1" to the "Main" section of your FS9.cfg). Once you get a feel for what the FPS are doing (especially during ATC calls) shut down the sim and reboot into your BIOS. Once there disable the onboard sound and try your test flight again.After making the flight with and without sound enabled only you can decide if a PCI sound card is worthwhile to you.Good luck,Greg

Hello All, Thanks for all of you taking the time to answer -- the majority of your answers I thought about later after my post and I did the following.Standard FS9 start up scene, mine is Newark with Citation X at night. Tested areas, cockpit, vc, tower view and spot view looking at rear. This is my 2nd system with 2.8 P4 and ATI Radon 9800 Pro. Also, Aerosofts Manhatten scenery and Simflyers KEWR scenery, so this particular area is the most heavy scenery I have in FS. Lastly, ALL sliders are at full right other than water and FR set to unlimited.FDC was running, as was Active Sky 2004.5 and much traffic.Test 1. with normal sound and on board sound on.CP 12.9 - 13.4vc 13.0 - 14.0Tower 24.0 - 25.0 looking at just trees from this viewspot 10.5 - 11.1Test 2. TURNING FS9 SOUND OFF WITH Q KEYCP 13.1 - 14.3VC 12.4 - 13.8TOWER 24.8 - 25.7 SAME VIEW AS TEST 1.SPOT 12.3 - 13.2TEST 3. TURNING OFF ON BOARD SOUND AT BIOSCP 13.2 - 16.6VC 16.3 - 17.8TOWER 25.5 - 26.9 SAME VIEW AS TEST 1SPOT 15.5 - 17.3Keep in mind that this IS the heaviest scenery with Manhatten and Sim Flyers KEWR both running that I have in FS, one overlaps the other, so we are getting very low FPS because of that.Also, just turning off the sound in FS still leaves the on board system running which is CPU dependent from what I gather.CONCLUSION FROM ABOVE TESTS:It would seem to me that the on board sound does eat a bit of FPS more than just a sound card, even when FS sound is turned off. So for my use's being that I run all the above programs at the same time, (also there are two monitors on the ATI 9800 pro, one moving and one instruments), that the on board sound is degrading my performance slightly.I will install a sound card today and recheck all my tests and publish the results tonight.Best to all, Clay

well i go much better frame rates with the onboard sound compared to a quality PCI sound card. that said if you do not have a dedicated sound chip you would probably better of with a plug in job, AFAIK the only onboard sound chip that is better than PCI sound cards is the nForce 2 APU (Audio Processing Unit), that comes only with the Nforce 2 chipset. according to Tom's Hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/game/20030405/...r_games-02.html after the nForce 2 APU the best was the Creative Audigy 2, almost matched by the Hercules Fortissimo 3. That said the nForce only supports 5:1 or 6 speakers, so if you are using 7:1 or 8 you will need a high end sound card such as those i mention above. I only have a 4:1 speaker system on my nForce APU and it sounds pretty good to me.

I've never noticed much frame rate difference worth worrying about, just differences in sound quality...I'm sure would probably vary greatly to the MB, types of cards, compared, etc...In my case, with an intel chipset, and the AC97? onboard sound I have, my cheap pci soundblaster cards works better. In my case, the onboard sound had more stutters, worse quality, "static type noise, etc", than the 2nd PCI soundblaster card I have. The SB card is much smoother, with less stutters in sound, and a better quality, without the weird static noise I get with the onboard. So I use the pci SB card...But I do leave my box setup so I can use either one, by picking at bootup. Actually, I could run them both, but in reality, I use the SB 99% of the time, and rarely use the onboard sound. My advise, is to try both, and whichever works best in FS, there ya go. MK